


Sunflowers

by telm_393



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Seasonal Affective Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Thor has Seasonal Affective Disorder, and his friends help make the long Midgardian winter bearable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunflowers

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this fic for this prompt:
> 
> I'm feeling the downswing these days, and I'm working really hard to counteract it, but I'm so tired some days...
> 
> So if it's not too much trouble, give me a fic about someone suffering the same thing, and someone else/everybody else being understanding (once they figure out what's going on?) or helpful.
> 
> (http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/13316.html?thread=30953732#t30953732)

On Asgard, the sun shines brightly more often than not.  
  
However, some days, the rain is heavy and the sky becomes dark. Some days, it even snows--this is the Asgardian winter, only some weeks and then the sky is clear again, but it is a most miserable time.  
  
Even so, because Asgard is a golden place, and it could not be so without the sun near constantly reflecting off of their buildings, their towers and castles and bridges, the winter is brief.  
  
This does not mean that Thor has not experienced his fair share of cold weather. He has, after all, been to Jotunheim, as well as to most of the other realms, which cycle through seasons much more noticeably than in Asgard.  
  
Thor loathes going to any realm in the dark seasons, in the sunless seasons, the seasons of snow and frigid rain. He does not like the feelings he gets, the heaviness that seems to chain him to the ground, make his movements ever so slightly sluggish, though this is not a tragedy, as his skills are beyond those of his comrades even when the cold enters his soul and _freezes_.  
  
The lack of light makes him feel tired, like it is always time to sleep, and he often finds himself exhausted when standing watch, as though he will, at any second, collapse. However, he keeps himself awake because he must, though he often switches between wishing to weep and wishing to attack something, anything, just to feel some kind of excitement, no matter how strangely muted.

The Asgardian winter is different.  
  
Then, he almost never wakes up, only to eat--because in these times food is the only thing he can derive enjoyment from, so much so that he often makes himself sick--and train, something that he usually adores, but cannot stand when the days are shadowed, the ache in his bones feeling like something fatal.  
  
Loki always jokes that Thor hibernates during the winters, but he is kind to Thor during those days, not making his usual barbed jokes or playing pranks.  
  
Instead, he lets Thor sleep, and often appears in Thor's room with one of those books of stories Thor adores, and reads to him. The stories are not as enjoyable as they usually are, but they stop him from thinking about how deeply unhappy he feels, stop the bitter anger at these unexplained feelings that brew in the back of his mind, and inspire pleasant dreams.  
  
Thor survives Asgard's sunless seasons because of Loki.  
  
+  
  
But time goes on.  
  
Now, Loki is gone.  
  
Now, Thor resides on Midgard.  
  
He expects the winter, naturally.  
  
But he has never resided in one place for the entirety of a long winter.  
  
And it is so very long.  
  
+  
  
It starts slowly. The warmth of Summer turns to Autumn, and the trees are dying. Thor looks outside and recognizes the peculiar sadness building in his abdomen, the sadness that will turn into something similar but strange and wrong, into heaviness and exhaustion and--no. Not now. Not anymore.  
  
+  
  
But the winter comes, and Thor does not feel the cold as strongly as Midgardians do, but he feels it all the same, turning the world gray and making his soul escape his body through his lips, one white puff at a time.  
  
He was not ready for this.  
  
He is never ready for this.  
  
He thinks that there are still months of winter left, and the idea makes his stomach clench with despair, because he has lived for hundreds of years, but just a minute longer of this gray, sunless cold seems like an eternity.

+

It snows.  
  
Thor sleeps, and tries not to think of the frost outside, of the way that the city will become coated in white like Jotunheim, full of ugly, ugly snow that slows one down when they walk through it.  
  
He is already slowed down enough, sluggish and constantly freezing, though it is warm in the Tower.  
  
The snow makes him angry, the cold makes him angry, and, in the end, it is his weakness that makes him angry.  
  
His teammates do not seem to be in the same state of choking misery that he has found himself slipping into yet again.  
  
He tries to seem equally unaffected, but it does not always seem to work, as he nearly snarls at Bruce when he asks if he's not feeling well, if that's why he's sleeping so much. He says "it is none of your concern" and goes on his way back to his room.  
  
Thor finds himself trying to avoid his teammates, though he has always found them to be such excellent companions, and finds himself being short and harboring feelings of aggression towards them that he has never had before when he attempts to spend time with them.  
  
And he sleeps.  
  
+  
  
And sleeps.  
  
He eats, too, as usual. All as usual.  
  
He attempts to act as though he is well, as though he is not pathetic, suffering from some imagined, invisible malady.  
  
+  
  
It is the second month of winter and outside more snow is falling, and the sun is never coming back. Thor has lost all hope.  
  
He still fights, naturally, as he should, but he feels little when he does. That is not as it should be, but he cannot bring himself to be especially concerned.  
  
He trains, as he should, but loathes the necessity of it just as he did during the Asgardian winter, and past that does very little.  
  
He finds himself eating without truly tasting, without thinking, filling himself with food and feeling the warmth running down his throat.  
  
And then he retires from the kitchen and goes back to sleep.  
  
His teammates look at him with worry, and it makes him feel a certain defensive anger.  
  
He is a warrior, not somebody to be worried about. He is well, all is well. He is not so good a liar as Loki, but he already knew that.  
  
+  
  
Thor is nudged awake, but he does not wish to rise. When he sleeps he does not have to face the reality of the dark, exhausting, crushing nightmare he lives in.  
  
"Loki?" he mutters. "Leave me be."  
  
"It's Natasha."  
  
"Natasha," he says softly, liking the way her name tastes on his lips, but he does not wish to see her, so he tries to turn away.  
  
That is when he realizes he fell asleep at the table, and the shame is hot in his stomach, though it is quickly replaced by the exhaustion he still feels. It takes seconds for him to stop caring that he has been found in an undignified position. "Let me sleep," he whispers, and it sounds like he is begging.  
  
He can hear the frown in Natasha's voice. "Not here. Let's go to the living room. We can watch a movie."  
  
Thor enjoys movies, but he does not wish to see one now. He does not enjoy them anymore, will never enjoy them again. They are meaningless, colorful blurs on a glass screen. They bore him.  
  
He does not say anything. He does not wish to speak to Natasha, why does she not understand?  
  
She touches his arm lightly, and he feels a sudden surge of anger before it fades into heavy nothingness again, and he realizes that she will not stop bothering him until he goes with her.

So he does.

He will just sleep on the couch in the living room instead.  
  
It is more comfortable, after all, though, in truth, he does not care about comfort, not now.  
  
He cares about sleep. He yearns for a reprieve from the tedious cold, the snow (the same color stretching for miles, falling endlessly from the clouds, it is enough to drive one mad and--no), the gray, the darkness that comes so early, but there are no stars, and the moon is shrouded by clouds.  
  
He is sitting on the couch, next to Natasha. He barely registers the fact that his other teammates also are here--Steve, who enjoys the snow, though it on occasion makes him nervous, because he was once frozen, and that is a good reason to fade away in the winter months, but Steve is strong, and there are Tony, Clint, Bruce, none of them are so tired, not at this time of day.  
  
Clint, who is warm sitting on Thor's other side, asks JARVIS to put on "I don't know, just a movie Thor likes", and, presumably, JARVIS does.  
  
Thor does not quite notice, but the movie is one that he has often quite enjoyed, an animated one with vibrant colors and a story that is easy to follow and soothing.  
  
Thor is reminded of the tales that Loki would read to him, though the movie contains much less battle.  
  
He almost enjoys it, though, the gentle pace, and the way that Natasha allows him to lean his head on her shoulder, the way she runs her fingers through his hair.  
  
He cannot remember the last time he washed it.  
  
He feels dirty.  
  
He feels ill.  
  
He cannot remember what he last ate, but he knows it was too much.  
  
Thor is struggling to breathe through the misery, through the sickness, through the crushing feelings that he cannot quite describe.  
  
The movie ends, and Thor smiles briefly at the happy ending before the smile feels like an effort he cannot make.  
  
He blinks through his exhaustion so that he may see clearly when he realizes that his teammates--his friends--are all looking at him.  
  
"Do you often get this way in the winter?" Bruce asks, and Thor is too tired and ill and unhappy to feel anything but a slight buzz of anger at the intrusive question that would not seem at all intrusive were the sun shining, but he is heavy and he wishes he could hand some of his heaviness to another, so he answers the question.  
  
"Winters in Asgard are not so long."  
  
"But that wasn't an answer," Clint points out.  
  
"I have never been fond of the shadowed seasons."  
  
Bruce nods slowly. "I see."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're tired, Thor. I'll explain when you wake up, promise."  
  
And Thor has never had reason to doubt a promise of Bruce's, so he closes his eyes and sleeps on Natasha's shoulder as his teammates put on another movie, one he will not watch.  
  
When he wakes, Bruce tells him what he is believed to have, that it is a true illness and not a cause for shame (and though the shame is still there in the back of Thor's mind, he does feel it crumble a small bit when Bruce says that, because Bruce is smart and Thor trusts him) and tells him that SHIELD has doctors for these mental maladies, that perhaps he will feel better if he visits one.  
  
Thor has never been one for going to healers, but he has grown so unhappy that he believes he will, as Tony suggests, "Give it a shot."  
  
He nods after the conversation, smiling at his teammates because he should, and the smile does not feel so forced now that he feels just a little lighter. The heaviness still pushes him down all the same, but at the very least it has stopped snowing.  
  
Thor is still tired, so he goes to his room, and stops briefly when he notes the large vase on the small table next to his bed.  
  
It seems that while he slept on the couch, somebody came into his room.  
  
Thor's eyes soften and he almost smiles as he looks at the sunflowers, tall next to his bed.  
  
The name of those blooms, he decides, is apt.  
  
The flowers briefly remind him that the sun will shine again, and that until then, he at least has teammates--friends--family that will attempt as well as they can to make winter more bearable.  
  
That offers him a little hope.


End file.
